[Nark Order]

This PWInsider article pretty much sums up most of my feelings on that Edhe/Hardy feud. Written in 2008. It even mentions the shoddy Hardy promo work. The promos shouldn't have been that big of a problem considering they know Hardy can cut promos. It could've been worked on fairly easily. The potential for this feud was fucking ridiculous and they ruined it.

AFTERNOON THOUGHTS: MATT HARDY VS. EDGE - WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN By Mike Johnson on 2008-05-01 14:23:18 WWE'S HARDY DVD LEAVES ME WONDERING...WHAT IF? I had the chance to watch the first DVD of WWE's Hardy Boyz - Twist of Fate set last night, which focuses on Matt Hardy. The 60 minute documentary look at Matt's career is, for the most part, another well balanced look at Hardy's WWE runs, with comments from Hardy, Shannon Moore, Gregory Helms, Michael Hayes, Jeff Hardy, Edge, Jim Ross, Ken Kennedy and others. The DVD recounts The Hardy Boyz's career from Matt's point of view, then follows his journey as a solo act after the tag team splits. From the famous trampoline wrestling stories that make the Hardys the most successful backyard wrestlers of all time to promoting OMEGA to the typical wrestling carny stories of former NWA enhancement talent the Italian Stallion getting the Hardys booked as WWF jobbers for $150 a night, then taking $100 a night from them for the booking, to the tumultuous Matt-Lita-Edge storyline, it's a very good profile piece on Matt Hardy. However, the chapter on the already well known and covered love triangle that saw Hardy lose his job with WWE while injured then return is perhaps the most intriguing piece of the Matt Hardy DVD. Indeed, although Edge commented that the situation was a learning process for all involved and Hardy himself is mature enough to admit he was in a terrible place in his life by taking to the Internet to release his grievances - Dumas was not asked to take part in the DVD - what was left unsaid even as Edge noted that the company decided to take a negative personal life situation and turn it into a positive for the professional life of those involved was that World Wrestling Entertainment completely dropped the ball on the angle. Indeed, anyone remember how hot Matt Hardy was when he returned at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, attacking Adam Copeland and saying the name "Ring of Honor" (where he was booked to work the following weekend) on the house mic, before being dragged off in handcuffs? How much tension there was in the air between Hardy and Edge? The back and forth promos? The crowd reaction at Summerslam that tore the roof off the place? The intensity as Edge and Hardy tore into each other at the onset of that bout? No? Well, that's because between the idea that Vince McMahon personally brought Hardy back into the company after he was an outsider attacking Edge, how Hardy fumbled his first live promo back to the point he was almost never given a chance to talk for some time after, and how one-sided the quick first Edge match was, all pretty much killed any momentum Hardy created for himself online and with the fans. As hot as that issue was, as real and as personal as it could have been as a TV storyline, one of the lessons learned from watching the Hardy DVD is how quickly the momentum of an angle, no matter how perfectly handed to a company based on a real-life situation with real life emotions, no matter how deeply fans legitimately care about those performers involved, can quickly become muddied and stomped out with poor decisions. In this case, WWE took the golden goose and cooked it before it laid a single golden egg. The booking of the Edge-Matt storyline will go down in the history books as one of the biggest missed opportunities in WWE history, one that was lost the second Edge and Hardy entered the ring at Summerslam. Instead of a bloody, hard-fought grudge match, instead it was a bout that was seemingly designed to knock Matt Hardy down from whatever babyface pedestal all the online and insider sympathy he had received (or as some felt at the time, engineered) and remind him that he was back to being a contracted WWE player and would play by their rules and the opportunities they give him, not the ones he made for himself. Hardy noted on the DVD that Edge was the company's golden boy at the time. The reality is that Edge gained a lot of heel heat and a rub from the triangle scandal, but looking back, it's obvious that the company had the chance to create something that the NWA had in Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat, that WWF had in Randy Savage vs. Hulk Hogan and ECW had in Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven - a rivalry that could always refresh itself, with personalities that could always play off their history with the other and have great matches. They had a chance to create something that would make them money in the months and years to come - a rivalry for the ages, borne out of emotion and reality. Instead, Edge became a star and Matt Hardy went to the mid-card. Hardy would eventually return to form as a top star for Smackdown (hence his huge Wrestlemania XXIV pop when he attacked MVP), but it's still a far cry from what could have been for him under different set of booking circumstances. I am sure he's happy as the only thing he ever wanted in his life was to be a WWE star, but there's always going to be that "What If" question for me, especially after watching the DVD. I have to wonder if that question rings in Matt Hardy's ears as well.